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This week: Patricia realized who she wanted to be when she grows up when she sat down with the majestic Rhodessa Jones. They talk about the creation of The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, and we learn that the California Arts Council once funded aerobics classes for female inmates. The Medea Project seeks to use the transformative potential of art to stem the recidivism rate for women prisoners. It is dedicated to the power that storytelling—of speaking in the first person—possesses to replace shame with resilience and to bring compassion into extreme circumstances. No allusions to OITNB are made, but Vee wouldn’t stand a chance against Rhodessa.

Performer, teacher, director, Rhodessa Jones is Co-Artistic Director of San Francisco’s performance company Cultural Odyssey. Jones directsThe Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, an award-winning performance workshop committed to incarcerated women’s personal and social transformation, now in it’s 25th year. As recipient of the U.S. Artist Fellowship, Jones expanded her work in jails and educational institutions internationally. She conducts Medea Projects in South African prisons, working with incarcerated women and training local artists and correctional personnel to embed the Medea process inside these institutions. In 2012, she was named Arts Envoy by the U.S. Embassy in South Africa. Recent U.S. residencies include Brown University and Scripps College Humanities Institute. She also was the Spring 2014 Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence at theUniversity of Wisconsin. MayorEd Leeand theSan Francisco Art Commissionpresented the 2013 Mayor’s Art Award to Jones, for her “lifetime of artistic achievement and enduring commitment to the role of the arts in civic life.” In addition, she is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the California College of the Arts, SF Bay Guardian’s Lifetime Achievement Award, SF Foundation’s Community Leadership Award, Non-Profit Arts Excellence Award by the SF Business Arts Council, and an Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theater.

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This week: Dana B makes a run for the border. Dana B from What’s the T? interviews jet-setting artists Leonor Antunes at ZONA MACO and Carson Fisk Vittori at Material Art Fair.

In her final dispatch from Mexico City, Dana B. interviews Joel Dean and Jason Benson of Oakland’s important projects on IP’s booth at Material Art Fair, their duo show at Lodos Contemporáneo, fashion earring trends, blue masa tortillas and how we suggested she become a drug mule in order to pay her expenses on the trip versus sending in her receipts to the home office.

In 458 weeks we have generated some good interviews, some bad interviews, some memorable, some forgettable, but this week is something new.

The audio you sent me, which I *think* was supposed to be an interview about the truly interesting End/Spring Break project with some combination of the artists Domingo Castillo, Patti Hernandez and/or Kathryn Marks along with BAS reporters Dana B. Brian A, and Patricia M, joining you for the fun, is, if presented as an interview, not an interview. What I have is the equivilant of sticking a tape recorder behind the bar on “free demerol night” and letting it roll.. It is more sound art than interview and is admittedly in moments damn funny. Have you seen “Party Monster“?

This is all a lead up to saying, “I’m not fucking editing this mess, I’m running it raw”, which is a rare moment of prophetic skill, I predicted would be my reaction when we talked about it while recording the intro.

I can’t make heads or tails of it all despite serious effort, and there are some funny and interesting moments, though I have cursed your name at great length and had to run out for extra voodoo doll pins, I will admit the audio is in line with the spirit of the project.